IBM is betting that the growth of new network-based data services, and service-oriented architecture in particular, will fuel increased demand for network and systems management services.

The company's software group is spending millions on that bet, having grabbed up all 11 companies in the last year alone. Ending 2005 with a bang, IBM said it would acquire network management vendor Micromuse, application-discovery and dependency-mapping software maker Collation, XML networking vendor DataPower and portal-software provider Bowstreet.

"The large management software vendors realize they need the network piece of the puzzle to get the full picture with SOA, advanced IP, business services and IT service management," says Thomas Mendel, a vice president and research director with Forrester Research.

For instance, IBM's pending $865 million Micromuse acquisition will give Big Blue an established network fault- and performance-management technology that far exceeds the capabilities of its own Tivoli NetView. Micromuse's Netcool is a "manager of managers" technology that can collect events and aggregate alerts from countless devices and vendor gear. Even though it's considered less challenging to track than application or service-level performance, for instance, network performance - especially on the large scale that Netcool could handle - is absolutely critical to getting a full picture of IT performance, industry watchers say.

"Many things can happen - as in go wrong - if they don't get the network element right," Mendel says. Cisco's entry into the management market is proof that the network is being recognized as increasingly critical to the success of applications, business processes and services running across the infrastructure, he adds. Cisco last year said it is looking to expand its proprietary network-monitoring tools into enterprise-scale management products that can tackle multivendor networks, advanced IP applications and business services.

In addition to acquiring network management expertise with Micromuse, IBM will also gain access to the company's carrier and service provider customers and be better able to compete with CA and HP. HP's OpenView Network Node Manager software is a popular tool across vertical markets, but historically the vendor's biggest clients have been service providers. CA acquired its way into the service provider market as well through last year's Concord acquisition.

Couple these network management gains with the gains from two other purchases - Collation, which provides application-dependency mapping technology, and DataPower, which gives Big Blue application-oriented networking prowess - and observers say IBM will have the technologies necessary to manage advanced IP networks and SOA applications.

Before the addition of Collation's mapping technology to IBM's infrastructure-management suite, Big Blue wasn't keeping up with its competition. "Before the Collation acquisition, IBM was lagging [behind] BMC, CA and Mercury in providing a one-stop shop" for infrastructure management, Mendel says. The acquisition confirmed the importance of application-dependency mapping for complete IT service management, but more importantly it gave IBM the tools in-house to deliver an all-in-one tool via the Collation technology and its own Tivoli Business Service Management product.